Salaam Tokyo

It would seem that the Japanese are just as curious about India as everybody else is:

“When you talk about India,” says Miki Akiko, chief curator at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, “people think of the technological boom on one side and the spiritual side on the other; or on one side, the rich, and the other side, the poor. But there are a lot of people living just like us, having similar problems, similar hopes and dreams.”

Miki is curator of “Chalo! India,” a new exhibition at the Mori Art Museum that focuses on contemporary art from the country. “There is a lack of information about contemporary Indian culture,” she says. “The idea is for visitors to the show to get an idea of today’s India, its society and people, through the artworks. The exhibition aims to give people a different perspective, a different vision.”

With “Chalo! India,” the Mori continues to introduce the contemporary art of often overlooked regions of the world to Japanese audiences — a theme established with previous exhibitions such as 2006’s “Africa Remix,” and “The Elegance of Silence: Contemporary Art from East Asia” in 2005. Like these shows, “Chalo! India” faces the challenge of finding a way to present the art of people of varied backgrounds, languages, religions and lifestyles. [ . . . ]

over the last seven or eight years, with the emergence of a younger generation of artists, and also with the economic situation, the whole art scene in India has become more diversified. We thought it was important to present the artistic scene of India at this moment, and it was possible to do it on a large scale.